Why Red Dead Redemption Was, and Still Is, Such a Damn Good Game

Rockstar Games recently set the internet ablaze with an announcement that gamers have been dreaming of for years. After a weekend of teasing, the company came right out and announced it: Red Dead Redemption 2 is coming.

Those words alone are enough to drive some of us into frenzied bliss. But if you're on the outside looking in, I'd like to bring you into the fold. No one should be permitted to miss the original Red Dead Redemption, one of the very best games ever made.

Released for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 back in 2010, Red Dead Redemption is, essentially, a cowboy simulator. Set in 1911, RDR has you play as John Marston, a badass gunslinger with a mysterious past. Working with the Bureau of Investigation, Marston hunts down the members of his old gang, lured by the promise that the feds will let him go back and live on the homestead with his wife and son once the dirty work is done. It's a simple story, one beautifully executed in a fictionalized American West.

Grand Theft Horse

RDR's 'Dead Eye' feature lets you place a handful of carefully aimed shots in slow-mo, like the preternaturally skilled gunslinger you are.

Rockstar

Rockstar Games, the makers of RDR, made its biggest and most notorious splash in 2002 with the classic PS2 game Grand Theft Auto III. One of the first modern "open-world" games, GTA III's draw was twofold. First, you could inhabit and explore a fully fleshed-out world, on foot or in a car. You could drive a taxi, explore back alleys on foot, or just cruise through rush hour traffic in a sports car at top speed. Second, you could murder innocent pedestrians, engage in shootouts with the cops, or just generally be a violent sociopath.

The Grand Theft Auto games that followed expanded on both of these halves—let's call them "exploration" and "murderin'"—in the modern, urban landscape. By GTA V you could buy homes, ride motorcycles, date romantic interests, trick out cars, and of course kill people in increasingly bombastic ways.

To summarize Red Dead Redemption as "Grand Theft Horse" is apt, but an enormous understatement.

To summarize Red Dead Redemption as "Grand Theft Horse" is apt, but also an enormous understatement. By translating the GTA formula into 1911, Rockstar made both halves of the already-great equation much, much better. Everyday life in the old American west is more unusual, more open, more beautiful, and more dangerous than any modern American city. Forget driving a sports car. In Red Dead you lasso a horse and then ride it to a canyon, with an eye out for bandits and coyotes on the way. Despite being a generation old, the game's graphics hold up and the vistas are genuinely breathtaking.

Words can barely describe the feeling when, as you are heading back to town with the sun setting over distant mesas, a cougar leaps from the brush and fells your trusty steed in a single swipe, leaving you with no choice but to empty your revolver in a frantic attempt to save your own life. Suffice it to say it's satisfying to skin the creature right then and there and then sell its hide to replace the ammo you pumped into it. And that's when you're just riding around and exploring. Look, you can't go to Westworld. But you can play Red Dead.

A History of Violence

Here's another advantage RDR has over GTA: Gunning down bandits isn't something you do (just) for fun. Rather, it fits the setting perfectly. The are guns to sling and bounties to hunt for good reason. You get to engage in gunfights with bandits and thieves from the relative moral high-ground—or at least even footing—instead of having to roleplay as an irredeemable, comically murderous scumbag, or just pull yourself out of the fiction entirely.

Look, you can't go to Westworld. But you can play Red Dead.

Sure, you'll link up with thieves and ne'erdowells along the way, and end dozens more lives than you probably need to, but this is not just some cartoonish murder spree. Each trigger pull is (mostly) justified, and will weigh as heavily on your heart as it does on John Marston's. The story is excellent, and though it's best discovered by playing the game yourself, I'll just say that Marston's tale of redemption and revenge is a heart-wrenching and bittersweet one, with vengeance that feels simultaneously satisfying and realistically hollow. It's a real trip.

Over the years, I've gone back to play Red Dead Redemption front-to-back no less than three times, and I'm revving up to take another pass. The old consoles are certainly showing their age (and there's no PC version) but RDR is still an eminently enjoyable masterpiece. If you've got an Xbox 360 or PS3 hanging around, you can pick up a copy for the almost criminally low price of $13, or $24 for the Game of the Year Edition, which comes with a great alternate story involving zombies. If you've got an Xbox One, you can play it on there as well. And you should!

Red Dead Redemption 2 is coming fall of 2017, and while the new Xbox One and PS4 consoles will let the West come to life in higher-fidelity and greater scope than ever before, there's no guarantee this game will be as good as its predecessor. Plenty a sequel has gone very bad. But if the new trailer is any indication, it will at least be jaw-droppingly beautiful:

At the very least it's the perfect excuse to brush up on a piece of gaming history before the new version arrives, for better or worse.

Saddle up, cowboy. You won't regret it.

This post has been updated to include the newest trailer for Red Dead Redemption 2.

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